


Homage

by stelthykat



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Family or pseudo family, Gen, Spoilers for season 3+, descriptions of death and decay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-28
Updated: 2015-01-28
Packaged: 2018-03-09 12:38:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3249986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stelthykat/pseuds/stelthykat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Beth had been good, and by proxy she made others good. </p><p>Fuller summary inside to avoid spoilers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Homage

**Author's Note:**

> Summary: The events after Maggie is brought Beth's corpse. The moment she has with Beth's body and Daryl, and the moment that she realizes how good her sister was and what she made others into.

It wasn’t the fact of losing Beth that disturbed her. It was the fact that she hadn’t been there. Long ago, when they were still girls and terrified of the world around them, they would sit up late into the night and stipulate how they would die. So often had the death’s revolved around walkers…. They’d rarely if ever expected a person to end them. 

“And…. If I have to die,” Beth smiled shyly, chewing on her bottom lip as she eyed her sister warily, “I’d wan’ you right beside me. Y’know, like we’ve always been.” 

“Oh god Beth…” Maggie sobbed out, ignoring the pointed looks the others were giving her, ignoring the space that they had left between the body clutched in her arms and themselves. She tried her hardest to ignore the coldness, the utter lifelessness of her sister. She’d almost lost her once, only for her to recover and become strong, then she’d lost her again, lost her and never found her. She’d died in a dark and dismal place without her sister by her side. “Beth please, don’t do this, please!” she chocked out, feeling the tears rip their way down her face and pool at the corners of her mouth. 

“I don’t cry, not anymore.” Beth had uttered those words like they were the key to survival. She had said them to any who asked her, and only cried by herself, curled up in a solitary corner and stifling her tears by putting wadded up blankets in her mouth. But Maggie had known. How could she not? She knew Beth, knew what her sister was like. She knew that no matter what Beth would persevere and overcome any obstacle. Her sister was a survivor goddamnit. 

Maggie’s vision of her sister blurred as the tears and utter helplessness overcame her. Beth was gone, really gone. Like daddy, like mama, like all the others….. oh God how much longer did Glen have?!

A warm, calloused hand on her shoulder zapped her back into reality. Thrusting her eyes upwards to see who had dared to interrupt her mourning she managed to hack out a feral laugh. “Daryl….” She breathed, taking in huge gasps and ignoring how the tears continued to flow. “Daryl, Daryl, Daryl…” she quickly turned her head back to face her sisters and tangled her filthy fingers through the once vibrant golden strands. She supposed daddy would be ashamed, no, she knew her father would be ashamed. He was probably rolling around on the dirt somewhere asking her why she didn’t protect her little sister. He was probably asking her why she was inwardly blaming Daryl when it was all her fault. He was probably-

“It isn’t yer fault.” The husky voice rang through her ears and she winced as Daryl sank down next to her, putting his hand gently on Beth’s limp and lifeless arm. “So don’ go thinkin it is.” She opened her mouth and quickly shut it before she could blurt out something to regret. “She was…. She was strong….” His voice cracked slightly on the last word, his mouth closing in a firm line that highlighted the creases of worry and guilt on his face. 

“She’s strong,” Maggie sobbed, reaching down with her hand and visibly wincing as her palm hit a wet patch of blood. “She’s strong.” At that moment Maggie wasn’t sure if she wanted to live or die. 

Life had Glen, life had fear and hate and evil. 

Death had Beth, Daddy, Momma…. Death had release from this world of nothingness.

Life had Daryl who had stayed by Beth’s side and protected her, who stood by her side now and comforted her. Daryl who had jumped at the chance to save her sister. Life had Glen who would be here if he understood, if he could carry this weight on his shoulders as well as the other horrors he had and had yet to witness. 

Life still had good. For all the bad, there was still good in this shithole of a world. 

And Beth wouldn’t see it. 

“Daryl…. You…” Maggie swallowed harshly, feeling her throat constrict against bile and her calloused fingers embedding themselves deeper into her sisters scalp. “You have…. No… idea….” She rocked back and forth, frantic to see the good, frantic to see the why. 

An unseen look of agony and fury passed through his face, only to be replaced by nothing. And to Daryl nothing was sympathy. He didn’t understand. He would never understand the nature of Beth and Maggie; it was foreign. The closest he got was the one time when Meryl pulled him out of the creek after he had fallen in it piss drunk and was slowly drowning. 

He only did that though because of the slut who stood behind his brother and begged him to save the ‘little one’. 

He could never comprehend the hope and goodness that was so ingrained in Beth and Maggie. To him the world was as it had always been. Kill or be killed. That’s why Beth had fascinated him. She was a blank slate comparatively. She knew little to nothing about being alone, except that she did. She knew moral right from wrong, she knew the general idea of what it was like to be alone; but, she didn’t know how to survive alone. She was the little sister he’d never had – the friend who probably could’ve stopped him from making so many stupid ass mistakes had she only opened her goddamn mouth and said something stupid. 

And then she did. She couldn’t let the boy go, she couldn’t let the sadistic bitch run the place into the ground. No, that wasn’t morally right. It wasn’t okay. It was so Beth it would be laughable if she wasn’t lying in her sisters lap with coagulated blood dripping slowly out of her skull like a freshly hung hide. 

He touched Maggie’s arm gently, hoping to convey that for all his fuck ups and insecurities around people he did understand. A brother was a brother, no matter how bad. A sister was a sister. Meryl had been a bastard and a half but he was still blood. And in the end blood was all you had. “Maggie,” he murmured, wishing it was reversed, wishing he could go back and stop Beth from being stupid, or better yet trade places with her. “She was being Beth.” Green eyes flashed up at him with murderous intent as her rocking quickly subsided in favor of moving to crouch. “She couldn’t let that bitch hurt those people. She couldn’t let that boy get killed. Hell….” He swallowed as he looked into lifeless eyes. “She was being a good person in this fucked up world. We gotta honor that, we gotta-“ 

“We’ve gotta pay homage to that.” Maggie drawled, her gaze lowering back to Beth as her posture relaxed and her hands resumed stroking. No longer frantic or anxious, but calm, almost as if she was soothing Beth to sleep from a nightmare. “’S what daddy used to say…” She looked at Daryl, her eyes wet again with tears instead. “Was she scared? Was she in pain? At all, when you were with ‘er?” 

Daryl supposed a good man would lie. Daryl supposed had Beth been here, had their positions been reversed she would have lied, or at least sugarcoated the truth. 

“Sometimes,” he murmured, kneeling next to Maggie and putting a hand on top of Beth’s head, grimacing slightly as the matted and dead hair clung to him, “But there was also good times too.” He searched Maggie’s face for emotions, giving a short not-laugh he smirked, “We holed up in this Golf course an….” He stroked Beth’s head twice, “An she was bitchin about how she’d never been drunk. How she’d always been good.” He cleared his throat, willing any emotion back, willing himself to make Beth just another group member instead of an honorary sister. “So I made sure she had some good moonshine and we played a stupid game and I taught her how to shoot an… an when I found her again, well….” 

He noticed Maggie’s hands had stopped moving entirely, and her tear streaked face was watching him expectantly. 

“She was so strong…. She had to of known what was commin and she just did it.” He stroked her hair again and shut his eyes tight for a moment, only opening them as Maggie ever so slowly released the body of her sister to the ground, instead wrapping her arms around Daryl for a moment. 

“Because she was good.” Maggie whispered, as if it was their secret. As if it was their duty to keep it a secret. As if no one else could see that Beth was good. Her eyes drifted to Beth again. 

“’M sorry I couldn’t – didn’t bring her back…” Daryl stood slowly, extending his hand out to Maggie. 

“It’s okay Daryl…” Maggie took it, standing and casting another sad look into her sister’s eyes. “You did all you could.” 

It was only when they had left the body, buried under the first great tree they could find on the outskirts of town, and had left it behind for months, that Maggie understood. Beth had been good, a type of good that this world needed. And for all her failings as a human being, her goodness made other people good by proxy. It made Daryl good. That was obvious from the way that he held ‘Little ass kicker’ closer than before, from the way that he met her eyes more and made sure to bring Glen back. It was obvious from the way that he always made sure she was cared for. She supposed, in his own way, that they were family in his eyes. She would never be Beth, couldn’t be. She wasn’t good. But she was Beth’s sister and to Daryl that made her something like kin. 

While the body was covered with dirt and worms, while nature was taking its course and condemning her to a tomb Daryl knew who Maggie Greene was. She was good. She came to him with stories of her and Beth, she helped people more in a way that few could understand in this world. She sang around fires more often and held Glen tighter when he got back. She was a good human being. And because she was something that Beth cherished, something that Beth had clung too and needed, he would keep her safe.

**Author's Note:**

> I hate when Shows, Books, etc. Make a character and give them no direction. I hate when shows half ass a character and then kill them for no reason. Or kill them off to prove a stupid reason. I could write novels on why I feel this way but basically this fic was a fix-it for me (and people like me) who didn't really like Beth much, but needed a REASON for her character to be and a logical thought process as to why she did what she did. It's a bit late but hey, better late then never. 
> 
> Basically I was unhappy with HOW they killed her off, and how they set up that character. And considering I really only LIKE and ENJOY a rare few characters in this show I was really ticked. Oh well, hope you enjoyed regardless!


End file.
